The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121 000 people from Asia, to Europe, the Middle East and now parts of the U.S.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased and the number of affected countries has tripled. In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher”, - said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Tedros added that several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, scolding other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.